PCT: Day 129

Today was our 20th wedding anniversary.  We probably didn’t celebrate it like 99.9% of the rest of the world, but then again we aren’t really like the rest of the world with our travels anyways.  We got up and drove into town to pickup Allie who was joining us for a trip to see Burney Falls.  The falls are really impressive with essentially two waterfalls built into one.  There’s the typical, but still impressive, water coming from a creek flowing over a cliff, but just below that are hundreds of smaller falls percolating through porous rock from a subterranean reservoir.  I think it was prettier and more impressive than any of us imagined.

We grabbed ice cream after the waterfall and then went to the trail crossing north of town to pickup Mando and Brother Nature who were just getting in.  We all headed to lunch before going our separate ways.  Allie, Mando, and Brother Nature to their hotel, Blue Lizard and the kids to the pool, and me to the luxurious laundromat. Once laundry was done we headed to Subway Caves, a lava tube, and avoided the heat with an underground hike.

We’ve spent a lot of timing discussing where I’m going to hike next.  There are a lot of options and a lot of considerations.  The easiest logistical option is to keep going through CA.  The downsides of this are the heat and distance from family.  The forecast is for upper 90’s the next couple days followed by triple digits next week.  Trying to hike in the cool parts of the day and siesta during the afternoon was rough enough on the 95F day, and I can’t imagine trying it at 105F.  We also talked about me jumping to northern Oregon and hiking to the Canadian border solo so that we could still hike most of Oregon as a family once Blue Lizard is out of PT.  We could also leave WA for the family piece of the hike, but we’ll slow down a lot as everyone regains trail fitness and may risk winter weather in late September. 

I’ve gone back and forth on this the last two days, making one decision and then another, only to change my mind later.  My hike has already been non-traditional with the jumps we’ve had to make so I’m not too bothered by hopping north and then coming back later to pickup miles. If I’d done the trail continuously up to this point it would be an easy decision to plow forward through the heat. I don’t feel the pressure to do that and there’s a common saying to “hike your own hike”. Jumping forward will also put me closer to Blue Lizard and the kids so they can visit me more regularly on trail. I eventually make the decision to jump forward to northern Oregon. I’ll then hike to the Canadian border before flipping back to northern California and resuming where I left off.